


Pillow Talk

by kappamaki33



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-09
Updated: 2010-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 19:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kappamaki33/pseuds/kappamaki33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felix and Louis have an oddly comforting conversation about the future in light of the disaster that is Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pillow Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Based on safenthecity's prompt: "Gaeta/Hoshi, Post-Earth, pre-Raptor." I really wanted to write something happy, so it takes place during the last eight hours or so of Gaeta's life that could semi-realistically support fluff.

  
“You know what I was really looking forward to?” Felix finally said, staring up at the bottom of the rack above him.  
“What?” asked Louis, who was wedged between Felix and the bunkroom wall.  
“A bed. A real king-sized bed with a nice, firm mattress.”  
Louis chuckled and flexed his tingling hand; Felix was resting his head on that arm. Felix’s right arm had to be going numb by now, too, and by the end of the night, one of them would most likely end up half-way lying on top of the other, or at the very least accidentally throwing an elbow to the other’s chin or ribs.  
“Sure. And if we were eating sautéed algae right now, you’d say you had been looking forward to real food most,” said Louis.  
“But with food, there’s a possibility, even if it’s a slim one, that we might find the real stuff again. New Caprica had fruit and those things that tasted kind of like rabbit, after all. Pillow-top mattresses, on the other hand, require civilization, and Earth was our only hope of finding one of those out here.”  
Louis glanced at Felix out of the corner of his eye. Felix’s tone remained light, but his eyes became dull and sullen as he pronounced the word “Earth.” That was hardly a surprise. After the reports from the ground had filtered up to CIC, Felix had wanted to get drunk, like half the crew was by now, but Louis had managed to convince him that large quantities of alcohol and high doses of pain meds were not a good combination. Instead, Louis had cajoled him into going to bed early, even though neither of them had any illusions about the Earth situation looking any better in the morning.  
Actually, Louis was surprised at how well Felix was taking the Earth debacle. Felix had always had his doubts about Earth, Louis knew. How could he not, being the one who’d plotted so many of the Fleet’s jumps, who’d seen firsthand how random and designless their path to Earth had been? The pain meds Cottle had given Felix so he could survive in CIC were no doubt mellowing him as well, though not nearly enough. Louis had felt Felix shiver with pain from his phantom limb so many times in the hour they’d lain silent but sleepless beside each other that Louis had decided that first thing tomorrow, he was going to tell Cottle he was frakking insane to have cleared Felix for duty so soon.  
As for Louis, he knew he was so focused on keeping Felix as positive as possible under the circumstances in large part so he wouldn’t have the chance to think about the disappointment of Earth himself. It wasn’t that Earth was the most painful blow Louis had been dealt. Even in the past five years, the _Pegasus _and Felix himself had both provided Louis with worse days. The hope of Earth and the memories of what life had been like on the _Pegasus _without the direction that hope had offered, however, were losses that were simply too big for Louis to wrap his mind around. So instead, he wrapped the fingers of his free hand around Felix’s arm. “So you wanted a real bed, huh?"  
“Yeah, you know, something a person could really spread out on,” said Felix. Louis raised an eyebrow and grinned. “I actually wasn’t thinking about it in a dirty way…not saying that that wouldn’t be nice, too, though.”  
Louis carefully slid his arm out from under Felix and propped his head up on his now free hand. “You might get something better than a rack someday. Full-size beds still exist. People that have ki—” Louis caught himself before Felix even had time to react. He knew they were in that awkward stage of a relationship where they were too close to joke about the idea of kids but not nearly close enough to talk about them seriously. “Er, the bed in there now isn’t much, but I’m sure you can put as big a bed as you want in those quarters when you become Admiral.”  
Felix nearly choked on his own laughter. “You’re joking, right? I’m never gonna make Admiral.”  
Louis hadn’t thought about it before, but now that he said it, he realized he wasn’t really kidding. There had never been any reason to think about a successor to Adama, but today, the Admiral had looked so gray and so very, very tired when Louis had seen him in the corridor after the first Raptor had returned from the surface. “Think about it: now that Lee’s President, or as good as, who’s going to take over when Adama retires? I know he loves Starbuck, but nobody’s crazy enough to put her in charge of the Fleet.”  
Felix stretched and tried to put his hands behind his head, but he bumped Louis’s nose with his elbow. “Oops, sorry. No, it’ll be Helo.”  
“No, not Helo. The crew might accept him, but he’s too closely connected to a Cylon to ever sit comfortably with the Fleet, even if we stay allies with these Cylons now. Adama knows that.”  
“Then it’s obviously going to be you,” said Felix, closing his eyes and yawning. Now it was Louis’s turn to laugh. Felix continued, “No, I’m serious. You have more experience than me, you’re older and more mature—okay, you’re older,” Felix conceded in response to Louis’s snort, “_and_ you haven’t stabbed anybody whom you were supposed to be interrogating lately.”  
Louis was ready to let their silly conversation subside into sleep until they heard two men shouting out in the corridor. Then something heavy hit the hatch, making both Felix and Louis jump. Louis leaned over Felix and peeked out through a gap in the privacy curtain. They were still alone in the bunkroom, and whoever was making the noise outside wasn’t trying to get in.  
Even so, that brief intrusion of the nightmare outside into their little hideout was enough to chase away any hope of sleep for awhile. Louis started talking again just to fill up the silence. “Okay, so I’m Admiral. I make you XO, then you get Tigh’s quarters with a nice, big bed instead of a cramped little bunk.”  
“I don’t want to be XO,” Felix groaned. “I’d have to be a hard-ass, and right now, that sounds so…exhausting. Make Dee your XO. She’d be a lot better at it than I would. Put Helo at CAG, and have Kara go back to training new pilots. She may be crazy and undead, but even I have to admit, she has a knack for flight instruction. Why are you looking at me like that?”  
“Are you sure you don’t want to be Admiral? Sounds like you’ve already put quite a bit of thought into your duty roster.”  
“No, thanks. I like my job. Anyway, when you’re Admiral, you’re still going to need somebody plotting your jumps.” Felix glanced over at Louis again and blushed. “Would you _stop_ looking at me like that? ‘Plotting jumps’ is _not_ dirty! Otherwise, the Old Man’s been propositioning me for years, and I can’t handle that.” Felix thought for a moment, then sighed. “Frak, it _does_ sound dirty, doesn’t it? My gods, we’re deprived.”  
Louis closed his eyes and nodded. It had been a long couple of months, and it had felt much longer to Louis than a couple months of being single ever had. “Yeah, that we are.”  
Louis hadn’t realized he’d laced those words with so much longing until Felix sat up and started sliding down toward the foot of the rack. “I told you, just because I’m not up for anything doesn’t mean I can’t give y—”  
“Cut it out, Felix.” Louis put a hand on Felix’s chest and pushed him back down so he was lying beside him again. Felix didn’t struggle against him. “We’ve been through this.”  
Felix batted Louis’s hand away and crossed his arms. “I still think this celibacy-as-moral-support thing you’ve got going is stupid. Losing a leg doesn’t affect my ability to give a blow job. But if it’s what you want…” Louis would have almost been tempted to relent if he hadn’t heard the note of relief in Felix’s voice.  
Obviously, there were a lot of things that were out of the question until Felix had more fully recovered, but their dry spell went further than that. Ever since he’d lost the leg, Felix had become very tentative about touching anyone. Louis could feel the tension and hesitation in Felix’s body under his fingertips when he put a hand on Felix’s back as they slowly maneuvered through the corridors, and when he squeezed Felix’s shoulder or brushed his fingers lightly down Felix’s arm as they sat beside each other in the mess, all gestures that, a few months ago, Felix would have greeted with a warm smile and a return caress. He wouldn’t let Louis touch him below the waist at all. He’d even recoiled from Louis the day before when they were sitting at the table in the bunkroom and Louis had put his hand on Felix’s good leg. It was something Louis had done so many times before the _Demetrius_, and yet Felix had flinched and unthinkingly scooted his chair away.  
That was a large part of why Louis looked forward to climbing into Felix’s cramped rack with him so much. For some reason, Felix didn’t mind the necessary, casual contact between their bodies in the close quarters of the bunk: Felix’s back pressed to Louis’s chest; Louis’s legs brushing Felix’s in a way that, had Felix been paying more attention, he would have noticed was far more careful than casual; and every once in awhile, when Felix was nearly asleep, Louis’s hand venturing down to trace Felix’s hip.  
Felix’s brow furrowed, and his jaw hung open for several seconds before he managed to speak. “I just realized something.” He turned his head to face Louis. “We’re living together, aren’t we?”  
“Huh?”  
“We’ve been sleeping together—just _sleeping_, neither of us believing there was any realistic hope of sex, every single night since Cottle let me out of sickbay. Maybe it hasn’t been that long, but… Your rack is literally fifteen meters down the hall, and yet here we are, jammed in here together. And I never even thought about it…” Felix sounded thoughtful, almost bewildered.  
“Huh. When you say it like that, I guess you’re right,” said Louis, trying hard to make it sound like the thought had never occurred to him before and that it didn’t much matter to him now. Louis’s heart sank, though. He had known this moment was coming. The only real question was whether Felix had the energy to pick a fight to drive Louis out of the rack now or if he’d wait until tomorrow and simply quietly insist on sleeping alone from then on.  
Felix rolled onto his side, facing away from Louis, but he slid his body back until they were touching. “Looks like I’ll be getting the bed of my dreams after all, when you get your Admiral’s stars. If you decide you want to install one, of course.” Felix tacked on the last part hurriedly, obviously trying to give Louis a way out if Felix had overstepped his bounds.  
Louis closed his eyes and smiled in relief. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to pin Felix to the bed and kiss him breathless, but there was certainly no point in frakking up all that they had by pushing Felix too far, too fast. He settled for sliding close enough to nuzzle Felix’s neck and trying to keep the mood light. “I don’t know… I remember what you told me about the disaster of Colonel Tigh being in charge. With all the duty assignments _you_ seem to be planning on making when _I’m_ Admiral, you sound an awful lot like the way you described Mrs. Tigh…”  
Felix flipped over and smacked Louis with their pillow, hard. “I’m only letting you live because you never met Ellen Tigh,” said Felix, who managed to maintain his scowl for an impressive three seconds before he succumbed and joined in Louis’s whole-hearted laughter.  
And that’s when Louis Hoshi realized that he was, without a doubt, the happiest person alive on the day the Fleet discovered Earth.


End file.
